Squirrels

[OnOff]

Maybe one for Ask The Vet............

In central London the other day. Stepped into the buildings Loading Bay and heard a scurrying. Now, I'm used to rats and mice but I look UP and there's a big, fat grey squirrel sitting atop a cable tray a good way from any greenery. I called the security lad who chased it out. Nearest trees we figured would have been Finsbury Circus and that would have meant it crossing Bishopsgate. I mean, it's not exactly Hyde Park round there, WTF do they eat, Pret a Manger, Gourmet Burger? Or are they just opportunistic rats with fluffy tails as I suspect?

 

[chris_k]

Rats with good PR.

 

[Blue Duck]

Some green lefty twat is probably feeding them rice cakes and coconut water.   :yellow card

Better hope them cables were SWA's.

ray

 

[steptoe]

Rats with good PR.

:slap

 

[binky]

contrary to popular belief, they don't just eat nuts. City squirrels have learn't to 'bin-dive'

 

[OnOff]

There's a colony of black squirrels near where I live, some mutation of the grey apparently. Saw one yesterday in fact when I went for a walk. I wonder if interbreeding is the reason some of our local greys are looking rather ginger now?

 

[binky]

Rastafarian squirrels? :^O

 

[Evans Electric]

Black squirrels !!!!  Come on !!!! :red card        Sounds like some alien mutation to me :C

 

[binky]

Tree rats from space!

 

[Blue Duck]

The black squirrel occurs as a melanistic subgroup of the eastern gray squirrel and of the fox squirrel.[1] They are common in the Midwestern United States, eastern Canada, and parts of the Northeastern United States and the United Kingdom

Black squirrels can also be found in the United Kingdom, where grey squirrels were first introduced from North America at the end of the 19th century.[22] The origin of the UK's black individuals has been a topic of dispute, with initial research indicating that melanistic individuals are descendants of black zoo escapees.[23] Regardless of their origins, the melanistic population in the UK continues to grow, and around the towns of Letchworth, Stevenage and Hitchin, as well as nearby villages such as Shillington and Meppershall in England, black squirrels are now as abundant as grey individuals.[24] Black squirrels have been present and studied in Cambridgeshire since the 1990s; in the village of Girton three quarters of the squirrel population is black.

 

[OnOff]

EP was right! Rivers Of Nuts! 

EDIT: Will endeavour to get a photo................

 

[Sharpend]

Even our squirrels are multicultural! Wow what a country we live in!

 

[Andy™]

yea, and look what the immigrant grey squirrels have done to the British red squirrels!

 

[Apache]

"coming over here, eating our nuts"

 

[septiclecky]

Another thing the yanks gave us we didn't want

 

[SLIPSHOD & SLAPDASH]

Over in Toronto all the squirrels are black. My niece was amazed at seeing our odd grey ones in my back garden